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climate crisis
No Climate Solutions Without Strong Democracy
If we want to make progress on either front, we need to understand just how deeply our climate and democracy crises are connected.
Feb 10, 2026
Right now, Americans are rightly alarmed by profound assaults on our democracy. Less in the limelight, but of critical importance, is the substantial backsliding and ongoing procrastination on the climate crisis. While the broader anti-democracy movement and stalling climate policy are both being driven by a highly destructive Trump Administration, too little attention has been devoted to exploring their common roots. Indeed, these issues may seem, at the surface, to be unrelated, or so vast that they require their own solutions.
However, if we want to make progress on either front, we need to understand just how deeply our climate and democracy crises are connected. They not only share roots but also feed into each other.
One of the most impactful threads tying these crises together is the misuse of corporate-led lobbying, Super PAC donations, and dark money groups. The biggest aggressor here is the fossil fuel industry. In 2022, companies including Exxon Mobil and Shell spent $124.4 million on lobbying. In 2023, the Congressional Leadership Fund, a Republican super PAC, received nearly $1 million from oil and gas companies. Plus, organizations like Republican Attorney General Association (RAGA) and other political advocacy groups are funded largely by dark money and corporations. RAGA, for example, received nearly $6 million in donations from gas and oil companies from 2020-2024.
Likewise on the individual level, Kelcy Warren--whose company is behind the Dakota Access Pipeline--donated around $18 million across Trump’s three campaigns. CEO of one the country’s largest oil companies, Timothy Dunn shelled out $5 million to Trump-backed super PACS in 2024.
All this private influence overpowers the will of American voters. Over half of us want a shift to clean energy, with even young Republicans supporting investing in clean energy and funding states to address the climate crisis. Despite this clear consensus, little progress has been made because of our campaign finance laws.
Disinformation is another powerful shared root of our climate and democracy crises. It threatens our democracy: Fake news stories have had real political consequences in our elections. In 2024, for example, we saw how destructive narratives surrounding undocumented immigrants eating pets and receiving hurricane relief funds had real sway on voters.
When it comes to the climate crisis, the same issues persist. A meta-study conducted by the International Panel on the Information Environment found that corporations, conservative politicians, and even national governments have contributed to rampant climate misinformation. It's not news that Trump is a key contributor here, having “called climate science ‘a giant hoax’ and ‘bullshit.’” And, too, it’s well documented that oil companies such as Exxon Mobil have for decades deliberately “led a coordinated effort to spread disinformation to mislead the public and prevent crucial action to address climate change.”
Election and climate disinformation feed off of our declining trust in each other and institutions that serve the common good. A 2025 Partnership for Public Service survey found that only a third of Americans trust the federal government, for example.
We can see the cycle of disinformation and distrust play out among climate change skeptics. A Pew Research Center survey found that many feel apprehensive when faced with “alarmist” facts about the climate. Participants feel suspicious that climate change advocates have a secret agenda—a problem fueled by a lack of trust and disinformation which only further perpetuates the issue. But here’s the kicker: This dynamic has opened the door for fossil fuel companies to control narratives about the climate crisis.
Absent fact-checking tools and coupled with the unregulated rise of generative AI, mis/dis-information will continue to circulate online with significant impact on how people vote and understand of key issues including the climate crisis.
Addressing these deep issues—from money in politics to waning trust—takes work. But he stakes are high and the harm to communities are real, so we must tackle these roots.
It comes as no surprise that climate chaos disproportionately impacts marginalized communities including people of color, low-income communities, children, the elderly, and those who reside in coastal communities. An uneven distribution of resources needed to prepare for climate disasters and recover from them is also a key part of the problem.
It’s no coincidence that the populations most impacted by the climate crisis are the same communities that have been systemically disenfranchised in our democracy. Take the disenfranchisement of Black voters: laws preventing felons from voting are one of many tactics used to stifle the Black vote. Note our prison population is notably disproportionately Black due to decades of discriminatory mass incarceration practices including over policing. This systemic exclusion means that citizens—particularly the most impacted—are denied a voice on the very issues that most harm them.
Clearly the playing field is deeply uneven: Corporate powers wreak havoc on our communities all while undermining the democratic process through campaign financing and misinformation. Meanwhile, as Trump violently deploys ICE agents to wreak havoc in Minneapolis and beyond, he pillages the woods next door (note Congress’s revocation of a 20-year mining moratorium in Minnesota’s boundary waters this January).
There’s no denying that climate chaos and democracy are deeply interrelated. The task at hand is substantial, but by digging to these shared roots, we can form the broad coalitions and solidaristic networks of cross-issue advocates that we need to build a more just and democratic world for all.
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Abby Martin's New Documentary Takes On 'Earth's Greatest Enemy'
Making the film taught Martin that "it is completely undeniable" that the US military "is the greatest threat to all living things on Earth."
Jan 28, 2026
It’s a commonly repeated statistic that the US military is the world’s largest institutional polluter, but what exactly does that mean?
The quest to find a real answer to that question led journalist and documentary filmmaker Abby Martin and her husband and co-director Mike Prysner on a five-year journey from defense contractor conferences and international climate gatherings to the Rim of the Pacific military training exercises and the fight against the construction of a military base in Okinawa that would fill in its iconic Oura Bay.
The result is Earth’s Greatest Enemy, released this year independently through Martin and Prysner’s own Empire Files, with editing by Taylor Gill and an original score by Anahedron. The film uses personal narrative, research, investigative reporting, interviews, and live footage to detail all the ways in which the Pentagon poisons the planet, including greenhouse gas emissions, the ecocide of war, and the toxins left behind long after the fighting has stopped.
"When you combine all of this, it is completely undeniable that this force that is upheld by extreme violence is the greatest threat to all living things on Earth,” Martin told Common Dreams.World’s Largest Polluter?
RIMPAC training exercises are shown in a still from Earth's Greatest Enemy. (Image via Empire Files)
Toward the beginning of the film, Martin sets out to explain how the Pentagon can count as the world’s largest institutional polluter, and why the numbers behind that fact actually undersell its impact.
It turns out, Martin told Common Dreams, that this statement is only based on the amount of oil the US military purchases on paper, which comes to 270,000 barrels per day. This puts its emissions at 55 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually, more than 150 countries.
This itself is a staggering amount of carbon pollution.
As Martin explains in the film: “It would take the average American driver over 40 years to burn as much fuel as a single flight of a Boeing Pegasus. The US flies more than 600 of these tankers.”
"You have to look at the military as actually the institution that's actually keeping the fossil fuel infrastructure in place through brutality and violence.”
But it’s also only the tip of the melting iceberg. Through an interview with scientist Stuart Parkinson, Martin reveals how that 55 million keeps ballooning when considering life cycle emissions from military equipment and from the equipment purchased by NATO allies, projected to reach 295 million metric tons by 2028, or more than half of all countries. And that figure excludes the use of military equipment in war, or the emissions from reconstructing cities leveled by US-made bombs.
In one particularly candid interview, a major general tells Martin that it’s great to develop alternative energy sources, “but let’s not walk away from what fuels today’s national security, which is oil. You have to have it.”
And until something is developed that can completely replace oil, “I think you need to keep the alternatives in check," he says.
Statements like these give the lie to the idea that the US can have a “green military empire,” Martin said.
They also show how difficult it is to separate the US military’s carbon footprint from that of the fossil fuel industry itself.
“Everything has really been wrapped up into securing the fossil fuel, building the infrastructure for fossil fuel, and maintaining that infrastructure empire in order to maintain a fossil fuel economy,” she told Common Dreams. “So you have to look at the military as actually the institution that's actually keeping the fossil fuel infrastructure in place through brutality and violence.”
'Human Detritus'
A helmet and dog tag are seen in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina in a still from the film Earth's Greatest Enemy. (Image via Empire Files)
The film also makes clear that carbon pollution isn’t the only kind of pollution the military generates.
“Once you get into the research, you realize every stone unturned is an entire other documentary because it's not just emissions, it's the totality of pollution that the military is emitting on a daily basis, the dumping of toxic waste, the legacy contamination, that alone is still killing people every day,” Martin said.
The film spends much of its run time digging into the landfill of military waste, from melted down pucks of plastic dumped off Navy boats and unused munitions exploded in the desert to decades of water contamination at Camp Lejeune, the 26 million marine mammals the US Navy is permitted to harm or kill over five years of training, and the more than 250,000 bullets left behind in Iraq and Afghanistan for every person killed.
Martin said that almost every fact or anecdote she unearthed surprised her.
"We're fighting for service members and every living person on Earth, because we are all victims of this.”
“No matter what you think you know, it's worse. It's actually worse because of how big it is and how every face is a story, every victim is a story,” she said.
One of the most devastating stories comes at the film’s beginning, as viewers spend time with Lavon Johnson, an Iraq War veteran who once starred in a US Army commercial and is now living on Veterans Row, a stretch of tents bearing American flags lined up outside the Veterans Affairs hospital in Brentwood, Los Angeles. “My life is so fucked!” he declares as he lifts his hands from the piano he furiously plays despite the nerve damage caused by exposure to hydraulic fluid while in the Army.
In the next scene, viewers see the camp being demolished by police, juxtaposed with images of war, pollution, and environmental destruction, such as soldiers breaking down doors or dumping trash off of boats, oil pump jacks working, and beachside homes collapsing into a rising tide.
Martin said she was inspired to open the film with Johnson because of a letter that late Iraq War veteran Tomas Young wrote to former President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney before he died, referring to himself and other victims of the invasion as “human detritus your war has left behind.”
“That always stuck with me, that line, ‘the human detritus,’” Martin told Common Dreams. “And that is exactly what they do to veterans. That is exactly what they do to veterans… they're churned up and spit out. They're the cannon fodder of the system. And for what?”
Prysner is an Iraq veteran who spoke out against the war, and Martin is very clear that veterans are not the target of the pairs’ critique.
“This isn't about service members,” she said. “This isn't about hating the military. This is about accountability and justice for them. We're fighting for service members and every living person on Earth, because we are all victims of this.”
The demolition of Johnson’s camp cut through with clips of war and weather disaster illustrates this point, and could serve as a sort of thesis for the film, showing that the US military ultimately turns everything it touches into detritus, including, if it’s not stopped, the planet itself.
“Everything on Earth is in Lavon’s tent,” Martin said.
A Movie and a Movement
People march against US militarism at COP26 in Glasgow, in a still from Earth's Greatest Enemy. (Image via Empire Files)
This sense of connection is ultimately why Martin decided to keep Earth’s Greatest Enemy as a two-hour feature documentary rather than pivoting to a documentary series, despite the fact that, the more she dug, the more she realized “it could be 10 documentaries.”
She also ran into roadblocks when seeking Hollywood distribution. While environmentalist distributors would praise the film and compare it to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, they also said frankly, “You’re never going to be able to get anyone to buy this stuff.”
But, Martin said, “I was so committed to making a movie because movies were what radicalized me,” citing inspiration from films like The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, War Made Easy, and Michael Moore's filmography.
Ultimately, her stubbornness paid off.
“After we educate everyone, I hope to decommission the military empire."
“It shows that everything from ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] to Gaza to the climate, that everything is connected,” she said. “Veterans, soldiers, the Indigenous people on the receiving end of this. If you care about cold water and good air, you can't walk away from this not being impacted. And that was the goal. The goal is to lock people in and explain the totality and to bring you down to the depths of hell.”
She added: “We have to understand those depths, and you can't get that with a 20-minute segment. You just can't. You have to go through the pain of all the victims in this community and come out the other side empowered with the truth and the resolve that we have to change this.”
Change is a large part of Martin’s motivation for making the film, by educating people about the scope of the military’s destructive force and connecting them into a broader coalition.
Martin speaks in the film about coming to political consciousness and beginning her career as a journalist during the Iraq War, meeting Prysner through their shared opposition to war and empire, and developing "profound climate anxiety" following the birth of the pairs' first child. She lamented that the climate and anti-imperialist movements have been largely siloed over the past two decades, though that is beginning to change.
Through local screenings, she said she wanted to “try to build the environmental movement with the anti-war movement together because… even though the consciousness is expanding, it's not happening fast enough. And we are simply out of the luxury of time.”
The sense of urgency has only increased with President Donald Trump’s second term. While the film does not cover this period, it points to many developments that have shaped the past 12 months, including Trump’s claim that he attacked Venezuela for oil, his imperialist push to control Greenland, and his deployment of ICE to terrorize US cities.
Toward the end of the movie, Martin includes a segment on the militarization of US policing and warns that “this is our system’s big plan for the climate crisis.” She also films a panel on “Domain Awareness and Air Superiority in the Arctic” in which the generals speaking tell US companies they have an “open invitation” to experiment in Alaska.
“We know what they want the Arctic for, and it's to pillage every last drop,” Martin said. “So if environmental organizations are not thinking this together, we have to do it for them. We have to do it for them quickly.”
So far, she has seen encouraging signs, with several Sierra Club chapters stepping up to host screenings and enthusiasm from the mainstream environmental groups, parks departments, and other city officials she has invited to attend.
But education is not her only goal.
“After we educate everyone, I hope to decommission the military empire,” Martin said.
For Martin, that doesn’t mean not having a military for self-defense, but rather decommissioning the 800 or so bases the US military maintains around the world and transforming the infrastructure into something that could help local communities in a climate-friendly way. It also means accountability for harm caused and redirecting military spending toward basic needs like housing and healthcare, and certainly not giving the Pentagon another $600 billion as Trump desires.
While that may seem like an impossible task given the current political climate, Martin maintains a sense of revolutionary optimism, encouraged by the global mobilization against the genocide in Gaza and the way that people are increasingly seeing the links between the multiple crises and struggles around the globe.
“There's so many of us,” Martin told Common Dreams. “We care about the planet. We have a vested stake in life. And that's our vision.”
“It's like they have a vision of death and destruction for profit,” she continued. “Our vision is life, and we have to fight for it with every fiber of our being. And let this movie assist you however you can do that.”
To attend a screening of Earth’s Greatest Enemy, see the schedule here. To host a screening of your own, email theempirefiles@gmail.com.
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Reimagine the United Nations Rather Than Replacing It With a Farcical 'Board of Peace'
Let us now weave a garment of our own, one suitable for weathering the storms, exploring the vistas, and reaching for the promise of the 21st century.
Jan 24, 2026
In April of 1945 a number of grand historical projects were simultaneously underway. In Europe, more than ten million battle-hardened soldiers were converging upon Germany, from the east and from the west, to drive the final nail into the coffin of the odious Nazi regime. (They succeeded on May 8th.) In Asia and the Pacific, a similar effort was underway to force Imperial Japan to accept “unconditional surrender.” (They succeeded on August 15th.) In the deserts of New Mexico and elsewhere in the United States, in total secrecy, thousands of scientists were laboring to invent a bomb that could destroy a city in a second, and give humanity for the first time the ability to bring about its own extinction by its own hands. (They succeeded on July 16th.)
And at the same time, hundreds of individuals were preparing to convene in San Francisco to invent a new global political body, which might – as the eventual United Nations Charter they produced boldly proclaimed – “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” (They succeeded, at least with the new international organization part, by signing that Charter on June 26th, and bringing the new United Nations into being on October 24th.)
But on April 12th the president of the United States died.
The conference opened as scheduled on April 25th. But just four days into their project the framers made a trek across the Golden Gate Bridge, to spend some time, in quiet and contemplation, among some of the oldest living things on Earth. And they set into the ground there a heavy metal plaque, which contained these words.
“Here in this grove of enduring redwoods, preserved for posterity, members of the United Nations Conference on International Organizations met on April 29th, 1945, to honor the memory of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Thirty Second President of the United States, Chief Architect of the United Nations, and Apostle of Lasting Peace for All Mankind.”
ARCHITECTURAL RENOVATION? MEET POLITICAL OBSTRUCTION
Now we have passed the 80th anniversary year of the United Nations. The scourge that apostle chose to confront is at least as acute today as it was eight decades ago. And a whole host of new challenges have emerged, ones not on anyone’s radar screen in 1945. So as abundant as our admiration for FDR and his fellow architects might be, the time has come to take a look at the structural integrity of that edifice for the challenges facing humanity in 2025 and beyond. As we will see, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the United Nations is long overdue for some renewal, renovation, and rejuvenation.
There’s only one problem. What in the world can we do, about the San Francisco Charter’s Article 109 Clause Two?
That provision decrees that anything that might come out of a conference to review that Charter must be approved by all five of the Security Council’s “permanent members” – France, Russia, China, the United Kingdom and the United States. These five states were already given the ability in Article 27 Clause Three to command the whole of humanity into inaction and impotence. This is “the veto,” which many observers have long asserted to be the greatest flaw in the San Francisco Charter. It degrades the democratic legitimacy of the entire construction. It insulates those five members from any kind of UN sanction (e.g., Russia regarding its war in Ukraine since 2022), as well as other states those five wish to protect from UN sanction (e.g., the United States regarding Israel’s actions in Gaza since 2023). And even when not actually cast, veto calculations dominate virtually every decision the Security Council makes, because it’s always necessary to get all five on board. It's what the late U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone, citing the renowned late political scientist Walter Dean Burnham, often called “the politics of excluded alternatives.”
And when we turn our view from Article 27 to Article 109, we learn that these five states can also veto any kind of modification to their unique perch overlooking the rest of humanity. In 1992, as similar conversations were brewing in anticipation of the organization’s impending 50th anniversary, The Economist magazine tossed a cold bucket of water on UN makeover enthusiasts, when it reminded them that “the vetoers would veto a veto veto.” Is there any way out of this enduring cul-de-sac of realpolitik?
THE CASE FOR REINVENTING THE UNITED NATIONS
Let’s take a look beyond the veto, at several other incongruities between the United Nations design of yesterday and the big questions of today.
The absence of any reference to climate or environment in the UN Charter, and the absence of actual success (by the UN or anyone else) in surmounting our looming climate catastrophes.
Piecemeal and insufficient national regulation of the multiple potential dangers from runaway artificial intelligence, which clearly won’t be enough to constrain this quintessentially global technology.
A funding system both inadequate and unreliable, dependent exclusively on voluntary national contributions. Sometimes they arrive. Sometimes they don't. But either way they give major donors the ability to bully and blackmail the recipient.
Pervasive gender oppression in many areas of the world, a country like Afghanistan openly depriving half its population of the right to education, and the outside world wholly impotent to do anything more than express outrage.
Perpetual poverty, inequality and injustice for billions, propagated by the globally unregulated might of global capital.
Lessons hopefully learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, which must now be incorporated into global public policy preparation for the next ones which are sure to come.
A UN General Assembly with three fundamental flaws. First, its basic operating principle – where India’s 1.45 billion and Vanuatu’s 327,000 people exercise the same “one nation one vote” – could hardly be more undemocratic or absurd. Second, it holds no power whatsoever to enact (let alone to enforce) binding international law. Finally, it provides no voice for anyone beyond “ambassadors” appointed by the executive branches of national governments – e.g., parliamentarians, the economically impoverished and other marginalized groups, and every single voter who did not support the current head of state.
The UN playing virtually no role in confronting what we might call “the scourge of perpetual preparation for war,” in forever newly-invented technologies of mass slaughter.
And if the looming competition between China and the United States increasingly emerges as the centerpiece of international relations in the second quarter of the 21st Century – a new and even more dangerous Cold War – one can confidently predict that the UN will most likely again be relegated entirely to the sidelines.
So a creative package of amendments to the UN Charter beckons to us as both practical necessity and moral imperative. Because many of these problems of the modern age are coming at us like a runaway freight train, brakes out, heading downhill. And in the immortal words of Neil Young, our Cadillac has got a wheel in the ditch and a wheel on the track.
VOX CLAMANTIS IN DESERTO
A number of civil society initiatives have emerged in recent years, aimed at inventing new tools of global governance that might help to slow down these multiple locomotives of future catastrophe.
One of these is the “Coalition for the UN We Need,” launched during the UN’s 75th anniversary year in 2020. Its name conveys its central conviction that the UN we got ain’t what we need. It focuses largely (but not exclusively) upon innovations that wouldn’t require Charter amendment – precisely because of the political realities this article explores. And its “coalition” consists today of 382 organizations, focusing upon a widely-differing array of issue areas themselves, from dozens of countries around the world.
Another is the “Article 109: For a Renewed UN Charter” coalition, launched just last year. Perhaps the most important word in its name is “a.” It does not push any specific “renewed Charter” complete in every detail. It argues instead that peace, justice, planetary protection, and widespread improvements in the human condition can be pursued by transforming the UN Charter – and that the provision included by the framers themselves for doing so is the vehicle to make that happen. It’s already been endorsed by hundreds of prominent global affairs thinkers and practitioners, more than 40 civil society organizations, and dozens of former diplomats, ministers, heads of state, and Nobel laureates.
And finally, in 2023 a transnational NGO known as the Global Governance Forum initiated a project to frame a “Second United Nations Charter.” This one also enlists a somewhat different group of former ministers, heads of state, and Nobel laureates among the framers. It offers a specific and comprehensive package of amendments, performing a line-by-line revision of the present Charter from beginning to end.
Some of their proposals, drawing upon longstanding conceptual ground tilled by others, are quite ingenious. One is an "Earth Systems Council," to address the health of our imperiled planetary biosphere. Another is a “UN Parliamentary Assembly,” to represent those left out of the present General Assembly and perhaps to encourage the emergence of transnational political parties. And another is a standing “UN Peace Force,” that could initially intervene in places like Bosnia and Rwanda yesterday, Sudan and Haiti today, and who knows where tomorrow – conflagrations where no states appear willing to put their own forces at risk for conflicts that have nothing to do with them – and eventually serve as the United Nations arm for peace enforcement.
In addition, in order to cultivate a sense of planetary patriotism, the framers decided to replace the opening line of the present Charter, “We the peoples of the United Nations,” with their own formulation, “We the People of the World.” The project seeks to strike just the right balance between optimal outcomes and contemporary political reality. Perhaps we might call this the Global Goldilocks Zone. A reimagined international organization not too hot (and thus politically unlikely to be realized), not too cold (and thus unlikely to make much difference surmounting big problems), but perhaps just right.
THE OBSTACLE OF 109 (2)
There is, however, sometimes an air of weary resignation among these global governance innovators. “A redesigned, democratized, and empowered United Nations could tackle so many of humanity’s problems! But we need to lower our sights. We’ll never get anything like that, because the P5 will forever block that.”
Or will they?
Article 109 Clause Two reads: “Any alteration of the present Charter recommended by a two-thirds vote of the conference shall take effect when ratified in accordance with their respective constitutional processes by two thirds of the Members of the United Nations including all the permanent members of the Security Council.”
But cold calculations of national self-interest might lead to P5 calculations beyond intractable opposition to change. The veto could only serve as a tool of absolute self-interest if it was held not by five states, but only one. The U.S. government, e.g., might benefit from its ability to block UN activities it does not desire. But it also suffers from Moscow’s and Beijing’s equal ability to put a stop to Washington’s pursuit of its own objectives through the United Nations. The benefits of the power to wield the veto must be balanced against the costs of one’s own initiatives being vetoable.
In addition, let’s consider the calculations specifically in Washington at perhaps its apogee of political and economic power. A Republican or Democratic administration just might conclude that the moment might be fleeting for the U.S. to shape and lead an emerging UN Charter review process. Better, perhaps, to seize that leadership role today, rather than letting China do so tomorrow.
And finally, surely someone inside the councils of P5 governments will someday make the case that the veto isn’t actually going to serve anyone’s national interest if the planet is on fire, if WWIII is over the horizon, if the killer AI robots are coming for us all.
And even in the face of implacable P5 opposition to change, civil society can ramp up the pressure upon them. When I talk to my buddies at the bar, most of them know vaguely that five countries can block the UN from doing pretty much everything, but none of them know those same five can also block the UN from ever changing anything about the UN. (More than once I’ve talked to global affairs professionals who don’t know that either.) Public education and civil society agitation about the monstrous unfairness of 109 (2) can surely turn up the heat on the P5.
Especially because there is more to Article 109 than its second clause.
THE OPPORTUNITY OF 109 (1)
The first clause of Article 109 reads: “A General Conference of the Members of the United Nations for the purpose of reviewing the present Charter may be held at a date and place to be fixed by a two-thirds vote of the members of the General Assembly and by a vote of any nine members of the Security Council. …” That word “any” opens up a universe of possibility. The summoning of a comprehensive UN Charter review conference is not, repeat not, subject to the veto. This is unlike almost everything of major consequence at the UN, where the P5 always seem to wield decisive influence. Here is one thing, of potentially infinite consequence, where they don’t. Even if all those five states vote nay, an Article 109 conference still might be called to order.
My buddies at the bar (and some of those global affairs professionals) don’t know that either. Just as we should draw public attention to the inequity of Clause Two, we should do the same regarding the potential of Clause One. Because the call to activate Article 109 could become a powerful mobilizing force in civil society.
It can provide something tangible and specific to urge upon policymakers, while leaving open what might ultimately emerge from the process. It can bring together a wide variety of activist organizations already working on other issues, who could pursue imaginative planetary governance upgrades to advance their own particular agendas. It can assemble a broad coalition of supporters who might hold widely different visions of the human future, but who could all agree on pursuing the process laid out in the Charter itself to define the most appropriate vision for our unfolding 21st century.
All these calculations, regarding both Clause Two and Clause One, may eventually bring us to the stage of vote counting, where enough states are poised to vote yea for a “General Conference.” As momentum grows, from what we might call the “P188” states, from civil society pressure inside the five states, and from a surging world public opinion, it just might mobilize a grand global movement that the P5 will find impossible to resist.
And so they may show up to that General Conference, whether they had voted to summon it or not. And they may negotiate in good faith at that General Conference, rather than adamantly refusing even to discuss any diminution of their Article 27 special privilege. And if an imaginative world organization proposal emerges from that General Conference, one obviously more fit for present purposes than the present Charter, they may choose not to deploy their Article 109 special privilege to prevent its establishment.
Especially when they realize that the General Conference may not need their votes after all.
LET HISTORY BE OUR GUIDE
Has anything like this ever happened? Yep. Twice. (At least.) And the protagonists both times found a way to dodge their own veto dilemmas.
As every American schoolchild learns, when delegates from the 13 newly independent American states met in Philadelphia in 1787, their official purpose was to amend the 1777 Articles of Confederation. After they had invented their very new kind of government, it was assumed they would use the amendment process set out in those Articles to legally bring their new nation into being.
What was that process? It was unanimity. All 13 needed to agree on everything in order for anything to go forward. (Columbia University Professor Jeffrey Sachs recently suggested that we might call them “the P13.”) So the American framers chose a different path. Their new document contained its own procedures for coming into force. When 9 of the 13 state legislatures had voted to join the new federation, the United States Constitution would take effect. That happened on June 21st, 1788, when New Hampshire voted yea. And on March 4th, 1789, a new thing in history was born.
Our second example is more recent and even more apropos. It is the invention of the United Nations. The framers in San Francisco might have set out to establish what they created via the amendment procedures set out in the League of Nations Covenant of 1920. That document required both a majority of its “Assembly” and unanimity from its “Council” for amendments. But the UN Charter instead contained its own procedures for coming into force. It required the approval of a majority of the San Francisco signatories, and all of the newly designated five permanent members. And when that requirement was met on October 24th, 1945, a new thing in history was born.
In addition, note well that in both cases the framers could have chosen a piecemeal revision of the old document. Instead, they wrote a new one from scratch. An Article 109 conference might adopt either approach. The reframers might choose to dive into the San Francisco Charter and make line-by-line revisions (the method chosen by the Second Charter Project). Or they might choose to draft a brand new document (the approach taken in Philadelphia in 1787 and San Francisco in 1945).
So let us imagine an Article 109 UN Charter review conference unfolding in much the same way as these historical precedents in 1787 and 1945. This isn't the only possible scenario, but it's certainly one scenario. The conference is convened - perhaps with the participation of all the P5 or perhaps with none. The conference produces a new document - perhaps with an elaborate package of amendments or perhaps written out on a blank sheet of paper. But that new document makes no reference to Article 109 (2). It contains its own rules for entry into force. And at some point, those criteria are met.
What might happen after that is anyone's guess. Yes, it's possible that after all that, all of the P5 will stand obstinately apart indefinitely. But perhaps it’s just as likely, as the far greater suitability of this new organization for our 21st Century world becomes apparent, that more and more states, eventually including the P5, will conclude that coming aboard will serve their individual national interests and the common human interest, will turn the tide from despair to hope, and will give homo sapiens a fighting chance to save ourselves from ourselves.
And then a new thing in history will be born.
HELP WANTED: ARCHITECTS AND APOSTLES FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
My buddies at the bar may not know much about Article 109, but they know the name of the President of the United States. And whenever I talk about this stuff with them (not often), it doesn’t take long before one of them says, “Trump’s not going to go for that.” But this work is not about this political hour. These are likely not immediate objectives, but instead a positive and hopeful vision of what humanity might do to build the future we need, desire and deserve. Someday, perhaps, the prevailing political winds will all be blowing together in the right direction. Maybe even before it’s too late.
So after you make your visit to that FDR plaque among those ancient and towering redwoods, make your way back to San Francisco, take the BART over to Oakland, climb aboard an Amtrak, and don’t get off until you arrive at Union Station in Washington, D.C. Then stroll over to the Tidal Basin and step inside the Jefferson Memorial. There you will find emblazoned upon the walls an abbreviated version of a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to one Samuel Kercheval in 1816. That was not 80 years, but only 27 years after the launch of the U.S. Constitution. But his sentiment about that document already?
“Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the arc of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. … I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. … But I know also that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind … We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."
So let us now weave a garment of our own, one suitable for weathering the storms, exploring the vistas, and reaching for the promise of the 21st century. Let us now act as chief architects of a reinvented United Nations. And let us now serve as apostles of lasting peace for all of humankind, as we proceed on our endless journey from the caves to the stars.
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Trump's National Security Strategy Heralds a New Age of American Carnage
The Trump administration is rolling out a new imperial logic that harbingers chaos and violence.
Dec 17, 2025
The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy, or NSS, creates a basis for a more chaotic and violent American empire.
Already coming under heavy criticism, with Foreign Policy in Focus publishing warnings about its implications for global development and grand strategy, the strategy remains perhaps most dangerous for its imperious dictates to the world. Behind platitudes of peace and prosperity, it provides a crude imperial logic for violence and aggression, even gesturing at a need for military interventions.
“For a country whose interests are as numerous and diverse as ours, rigid adherence to non-interventionism is not possible,” the strategy notes.
The Trump administration tries to distinguish itself from previous administrations by criticizing foreign policy elites for seeking “permanent American domination of the entire world,” but it displays similar ambitions, even if framing them differently. Rather than making serious commitments to peace and democracy, the Trump administration is prioritizing national power, economic expansion, and military domination, going so far as to glorify its ability to kill people across the world.
“President Trump is hell-bent on maintaining and accelerating the most powerful military the world has ever seen, the most powerful, the most lethal and American-made,” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said earlier this month.
Imperial Logics
In the 21st century, the United States has presented multiple imperial logics to the world. Despite the fact that US officials have largely refrained from associating the United States with empire and imperialism, they have developed national security strategies that have rationalized the exercise of US imperial power.
After the terrorist attacks against the United States on 9/11, the administration of George W. Bush developed a NSS that provided a basis for the United States to wage wars across the world. Under a framework of a global war on terrorism, the Bush administration claimed a need to act unilaterally and preemptively against alleged terrorists anywhere on the planet, even in violation of international law.
For two decades, the United States carried out the Bush administration’s approach, wreaking havoc across the world, especially the Middle East. The United States directed major wars against Iraq and Afghanistan, spreading devastation and destruction. According to the Costs of War project at Brown University, the United States spent about $8 trillion on wars that destabilized multiple countries and killed millions of people.
The Trump administration is trying to shift the focus away from great-power competition to sell the public on a new imperial logic that rationalizes national power, economic expansion, and military domination.
Leaders across multiple administrations defended the approach, even when facing criticisms about endless war, but US strategists eventually began turning to a new logic. Calling attention to rising powers, such as China and Russia, US strategists started to argue that the United States must exercise its military might to defend a rules-based international order against rising powers.
During the 2010s, officials in Washington began embracing the new logic, gradually rolling it out to the public. They introduced it during the final years of the administration of Barack Obama and then formalized it during the initial years of the first administration of Donald Trump.
When the first Trump administration released its NSS in 2017, it declared that the United States was competing with China and Russia in a new era of great-power competition.
“This strategy recognizes that, whether we like it or not, we are engaged in a new era of competition,” Trump announced. “We accept that vigorous military, economic, and political contests are now playing out all around the world.”
The new logic marked a shift away from the global war on terrorism, but it presented new dangers. By adopting a logic of great-power competition, the United States positioned itself for confrontations with China and Russia, two nuclear powers with growing influence across their peripheries and the world.
The new approach increased tensions with China in the Asia Pacific and rationalized conflict with Russia in Europe, particularly over Ukraine. Perhaps the greatest victim of the new logic has been Ukraine, which has suffered tremendously since Russia’s invasion in 2022.
For years, the United States and its European allies have been exploiting the war in Ukraine for the purpose of weakening Russia. They have been providing Ukraine with just enough support to defend itself but not enough to expel Russia. Their approach has kept Russian forces “bogged down in Ukraine—at enormous cost,” as Jake Sullivan noted earlier this year, when he was still national security adviser in the outgoing administration of Joe Biden.
The war in Ukraine may have resulted in enormous casualties for Russia, but it has also been devastating for Ukraine, leading current Secretary of State Marco Rubio to describe the war as a “meat grinder.”
“On the Russian side, they’ve lost 100,000 soldiers—dead—not injured—dead,” Rubio stated earlier this year. “On the Ukrainian side, the numbers are less but still very significant.”
Now that a second Trump administration is in power, it is shifting to yet another imperial logic. Facing concerns about the war in Ukraine, including the US role, the Trump administration is trying to shift the focus away from great-power competition to sell the public on a new imperial logic that rationalizes national power, economic expansion, and military domination.
Following the thinking of President Trump, who prioritizes wealth, power, and domination, the second Trump administration is embracing a cruder imperial logic that revives classical imperialism, or the use of force to open markets, seize resources, and maintain spheres of influence.
The Trump administration’s new logic takes aim at Latin America, where the United States is directing a military buildup and threatening a military intervention in Venezuela.
The NSS cites the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 to provide a justification for the Trump administration’s actions. Introducing what it calls a Trump corollary, it calls for a reassertion of US military power, the control of key geographies, and the exclusion of competitors from the hemisphere.
“The United States will restore US military dominance in the Western Hemisphere,” Hegseth declared.
Critiques
Now that the Trump administration has introduced its NSS, it is facing strong pushback from multiple directions. Not only are people across Latin America condemning the United States, particularly its unlawful killings of alleged drug traffickers in the Pacific and Caribbean, but the Trump administration is fielding a great deal of criticism from establishment figures, both in the United States and around the world.
Several European leaders have been highly critical of the NSS, especially its plans for US interference in European affairs. They have expressed shock over the administration’s call for “cultivating resistance” to European leaders.
Another source of pushback has been the US foreign policy establishment. Although the foreign policy establishment shares many of the Trump administration’s imperial commitments, especially to the Monroe Doctrine and military domination, it fears that the administration is not showing enough appreciation for great-power competition.
At its core, the Trump administration is preparing the world for future exercises of American military power.
Earlier this month, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed displeasure with the new strategy. She criticized Trump for going easy on Russian President Vladimir Putin and questioned why he is pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into accepting a deal that would leave Ukraine vulnerable to future Russian aggression.
“I think that there’s a lot that needs to be reviewed and looked at from the perspective of what are the long-term consequences,” Clinton said.
But these establishment figures’ preferred framework of great-power competition has led to significant tensions with China and Russia, including great-power conflict. Several experts have argued that the expansion of NATO provoked Russia, an interpretation that President Trump has used to explain the war in Ukraine.
Another problem for the foreign policy establishment is that there is little agreement over how to characterize China and Russia. Although some analysts warn that Russia remains a rising power, making gains on the battlefield in Ukraine, others insist that Russia is a country in decline, as indicated by its inability to conquer Ukraine.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that from a conventional military capability the Russians could not take on the United States or frankly many of the countries in Europe, for that matter,” Rubio said earlier this year.
Within the foreign policy establishment, there is just as much disagreement over China. Many analysts repeatedly sound the alarm over China, warning that the country is seeking global domination. Others dismiss these warnings, however, claiming that Chinese leaders are not seeking hegemony, despite their aspirations for world leadership.
“They really don’t seem to have an interest in being the hegemonic force that actually the United States has been in trying to maintain and enforce the rules-based order,” former Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said earlier this month.
Perhaps most awkward for the foreign policy establishment, however, is that the second Trump administration remains focused on great-power competition. Although its National Security Strategy does not define great-power competition as the definitive feature of international relations, as the foreign policy establishment prefers, the Trump administration is making hostile moves toward both China and Russia.
The Trump administration is keeping pressure on Russia, even while the president signals his willingness to sacrifice Ukraine as part of his vainglorious quest for a Nobel Peace Prize. Perhaps most significant, the Trump administration is intensifying its economic war against Russia while pushing European countries to embrace militarization.
This past June, NATO members pledged at the Hague Summit to increase their military spending to 5% of GDP, despite Trump’s acknowledgments that Russia feels threatened by the military alliance.
“We just need to continue to get stronger and to make sure that we don’t demonstrate an inch of weakness, because we’re not weak,” US Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker said earlier this month. “As we continue to implement the 5% commitment from the Hague, I think we’re going to be, you know, really not only the strongest alliance in the history of the planet, but really a dramatic force to be reckoned with.”
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is making aggressive moves against China. Although the administration insists that it is not seeking conflict with China, it is overseeing a military buildup that poses a major threat to the country.
Earlier this month, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth declared that China must respect US interests in the Asia Pacific, including the ability of the United States to project military power across the region. He explained the Trump administration’s approach by quoting a well-known imperial aphorism of former US President Theodore Roosevelt.
“We will speak softly and carry a big stick,” Hegseth said.
The Fundamental Problem
The fundamental problem, of course, is that the Trump administration is rolling out a new imperial logic that harbingers chaos and violence. Given all the harm the administration is already causing around the world, such as its crackdowns on immigrants, killings of alleged drug traffickers, and facilitation of genocide in Gaza, the new NSS indicates that the administration is just getting started in a new age of American carnage.
At its core, the Trump administration is preparing the world for future exercises of American military power. It is glorifying military domination, even preparing for military interventions for the purposes of seizing resources and maintaining spheres of influence.
At the same time, the administration is upending popular forms of politics and international relations. Its NSS displays contempt for democracy. Not only does it confirm the administration’s preference for monarchy in the Middle East, but it signals ongoing support for right-wing movements in Europe, which are positioning themselves to revive fascism.
Perhaps most dangerous, the strategy disregards existential threats to the planet. It embraces fossil fuels, the primary cause of the climate crisis. It even defends nuclear weapons, despite the extraordinary danger of nuclear war.
What the Trump administration is doing, in short, is laying the groundwork for a more volatile American empire. Rather than making genuine commitments to peace and democracy, it is introducing a crude imperial logic that makes the United States into a greater menace to the planet, with more horrors to come.
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Affordability, Abundance, and a New American Agenda
A growing number of Americans are ready for transformative change. Now is the time to forge a mighty movement of movements, one aimed squarely at political action.
Dec 08, 2025
Progressives of various stripes are attracted these days to several political ideas that must be handled with care or they could come back to haunt us. Considering these ideas points to the need for a new agenda for Americans concerned about climate and the environment.
Key Differences Between 'Affordability' and 'Abundance'
"Affordability" is a huge, legitimate concern for Americans and those who purport to represent us politically. Many progressives are using "affordability" as the rallying cry and point to high prices and inflation. As the success of Zohran Mamdani in NYC shows, it is a powerful political issue, and rightly so.
As I write, Trump just confirmed all this by calling affordability a hoax concocted by Democrats.
But here is something on which we should keep an eye. The underlying problem is not inflation or prices but simply that in our land of affluence, most Americans don't have enough money to live normal, secure lives. Progressives should follow Bernie Sanders’ and Robert Reich’s lead and focus heavily on that and on the vast social inequality government policies have allowed to accumulate. In addition to making prices honest, there are many, many ways for government to get actual money into the hands of people who need it. (Disclosure: in 1968—which feels just like yesterday—I helped draft model negative income tax legislation!)
Meanwhile, the "abundance movement" is a growing political force. There are already examples of it seeking to undermine public protection regulations and other guardrails that are alleged to slow or thwart progress towards abundance.
A looming issue here is that abundance advocates are moving to take advantage of affordability concerns and seeking to draw strength and momentum from those concerns. Abundance advocates must be forced at every turn to answer "abundance of what, for whom, and at what costs?"
The easy path to more and more has always been overall economic growth. It is not hard to imagine a focus on abundance supporting an effort to push GDP growth into ever higher gears. But GDP is a terrible guide to creating more abundance where it is needed. Lots of things do indeed need to grow and become more abundant, but many of them are things not reflected in GDP. And lots of things that are included in GDP need to shrink, and many of them, like fossil fuel use, need to shrink dramatically.
Also, a focus on creating abundance can implicitly endorse a national obscenity—our boundless consumerism. We should remember Wordsworth’s warning from long ago, “Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.” Americans should now be moving, belatedly, from a consumer society to a conserver society.
Here is my third issue. A position progressives often take is to defend climate action because it “produces jobs,” “lowers energy costs," and in general “helps the economy.” That is often true, but such arguments can be a problem. These arguments can leave environmental and climate advocates in a bad place. We cannot allow ourselves to appear to enshrine the primacy of economic values. We don’t want to be able to save the climate only if it helps the economy. Societies must act to prevent global climate chaos, even if their climate actions slow or hurt the economy in certain ways. Similarly, societies cannot let climate progress be halted or undone whenever the economy heads south.
Also, recall that the US economy still runs on about 82% fossil energy. Doing what now must be done on climate—achieving net zero fossil emissions by 2050, just 25 years away—is likely to be problematic both for low energy prices and the economy. Rather than over relying on the economic benefits of climate action, progressives should focus on measures to ensure economic security for Americans during the dramatic transition ahead, ensuring sufficient income for a decent life for those now living paycheck to paycheck or worse.
(Of course, what we are seeing today from theTrump Administration is the worst of all worlds: a determined attack on all climate progress despite its national economic benefits, all in an effort to sustain profitability of the fossil and AI industries while venomously undoing climate initiatives of the Obama and Biden Administrations.)
Past Failures and a Better Path for the Future
These issues bring into focus three great failures of US climate and environmental advocacy. I have been associated with this advocacy for many years, so I bear some responsibility. I hope these shortcomings will now be addressed with urgency.
1. First is the failure over recent decades to build a powerful political force for climate action. US environmental groups have been weak politically and especially weak when it comes to climate. We should blame section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code for some of that. Except around the edges, our leading groups have not broken out of the 501(c)(3) cocoon and its proscription of political activity and electioneering. The leaders of our environmental and climate groups should now come together and build a powerful, politically engaged movement, a fusion of forces, first among themselves and then with allied progressive constituencies.
2. We can see failure also in the absence of any real campaign to dethrone GDP as a measure of national progress and to replace it with an alternative like the Genuine Progress Indicator or something better. As Herman Daly pointed out, we have been living in a period of "uneconomic growth" for quite a while, with costs of aggregate GDP growth exceeding benefits. The best way to get beyond our current GDP fetish is to adopt a new measure or measures of national well-being and progress. One such measure should be a monetized one so that it can be compared quarterly with GDP. In various economies, analyses have shown that in recent decades while GDP rose wellbeing has tended to stagnate or even decline.
3. The third, and biggest, of our failures is the failure to appreciate and act on the underlying reasons for environmental decline. We environmentalists must confront a haunting paradox. Our groups have grown ever stronger, more sophisticated, and better funded, winning many battles along the way. Yet, 55 years after the first Earth Day, we find ourselves on the cusp of a ruined planet.
How can we make sense of that? We must begin by asking anew: What is an environmental issue? The answer must surely include this: “any issue that significantly affects environmental performance and outcomes.” When answered that way, focusing on roadblocks to environmental solutions, environmental issues will include: 1) our distorted political system; 2) a pervasive economic disparity and insecurity that paralyzes political action; and 3) the materialistic and anthropocentric values that dominate our culture. Environmental degradation is also powerfully driven by a triple imperative: 4) GDP growth at almost any cost, 5) ever-enlarging corporate profit, and 6) insatiable consumerism.
These six factors form an interacting, mutually supportive complex and are dominant features of our current system of political economy. It is no wonder that a frequent banner at climate demonstrations is “System Change, Not Climate Change!”
Regarding our political system, consider the following. When economic inequality mocks political equality, democratic progress is difficult. When corporate power dwarfs people power, democratic progress is difficult. When big money is central to campaign success, democratic progress is difficult. When the voting public is subjected to repeated lies and endless misinformation and propaganda, democratic functioning is difficult. When future generations and the natural world are not accorded political rights, democracy is deprived and unrepresentative.
These are among the underlying, root causes of our environmental decline and the climate crisis to which the US is the dominant contributor. If we hope to ever succeed at the level needed in our climate and other efforts, we must find ways to address these systemic issues, which to date our movement has largely ignored.
As I view America’s political landscape today, I think there are growing numbers of Americans who are ready for transformative change. We see that in the crowds Bernie Sanders motivates, in the many devoted followers of Bishop William Barber, and in the banners and signs at No Kings. Their numbers will continue to grow as the appalling horror show of the Trump administration continues and the need for deep change is laid bare. The message to progressive leaders, I believe, is carpe diem. Seize this day. Now is the time to forge a mighty movement of movements, one aimed squarely at political action. Those who are members of progressive organizations might well ask their leaders to get this job done.Keep ReadingShow Less
Two Negotiations, One Crisis: Why COP30 and the UN Tax Convention Must Finally Speak to Each Other
The world can no longer afford two disconnected frameworks for the same global emergency.
Nov 19, 2025
This week, governments are negotiating climate finance in Belém, Brazil and new global tax rules in Nairobi, Kenya. The coincidence of these talks happening at the same time—yet with almost no structured conversation between them—may be the clearest indicator of how disconnected the global response still is.
Climate negotiators discuss financing needs without asking where predictable public resources will come from, while tax negotiators debate revenue rules without acknowledging the rising costs of the climate crisis.
Treating these as separate worlds is no longer viable. Both deal with cross-border harms and deep inequality, and both require cooperation grounded in equity and responsibility.
The world cannot afford two disconnected frameworks for the same global emergency.
What tax negotiations can learn from climate governance
The climate regime learned early that unequal responsibility cannot be ignored. Under the Paris Agreement, global standards are paired with nationally determined plans. The system links international expectations with domestic realities.
The climate crisis has made the links between public finance, inequality, and environmental survival impossible to ignore.
International taxation has never made this leap. Failure to cooperate has allowed multinational corporations and wealthy individuals to underpay tax by shifting profits to low-tax jurisdictions and hiding wealth behind secrecy. As a result, countries lose an estimated US$492 billion each year to cross-border tax abuse, according to research by the Tax Justice Network. These losses directly undermine governments’ ability to fund the climate action, social protection, care systems and economic diversification essential for a just transition.
With this round of Nairobi negotiations now concluded, countries have signaled a rare opportunity to advance a stronger UN tax convention—one that delivers fairer rules on taxing rights, tackles profit shifting, and strengthens transparency.
The convention represents a historic chance to shift the burden from ordinary people to those who profit most from pollution and extraction, and to build an international system that restores countries’ tax sovereignty—the ability of states to use tax to deliver on their people’s aspirations.
Subnational leaders are already doing what global systems have failed to do
Cities, states, and regions are carrying the weight of climate action. They build early warning systems, reinforce infrastructure, manage disaster response, and support communities during heatwaves, floods, and droughts. In practice, this means that the vast majority of climate implementation takes place at the subnational level—in many countries this accounts for 70 percent or more of climate-significant public expenditure, rising to over 80 percent in some cases. Yet these same actors receive only around 10 per cent of climate finance.
This mismatch is structural. Global climate finance is built around national governments and large international funds, with access that is slow, complex, and tilted toward institutions with high administrative capacity. Local authorities dealing with climate impacts every day are left without the stable resources they need.
Despite this, subnational governments are modelling practical, fair climate finance. Kerala’s 1 percent flood levy helps rebuild homes, roads, and schools after major floods and strengthens community readiness for future shocks. Elsewhere, solidarity arrangements between neighbouring jurisdictions channel revenue from polluting activities into joint adaptation projects. Together, these examples show how small, well-designed levies can generate stable public revenue and ensure those with greater responsibility contribute more.
These local approaches matter far beyond their borders. They show that progressive, people-centred taxation can be implemented at scale and can complement national and international systems. They are blueprints for how global rules could be designed to be more equitable and more closely aligned with lived realities.
Global South leadership on solidarity levies shows what climate and tax reform can achieve together
A coalition of eight countries—including Kenya, Colombia, Barbados, the Dominican Republic, Mozambique, Tanzania, France, and Spain—launched the Premium Flyers Solidarity Coalition, backing levies on business class, first class, and private jet travel. These charges target the highest emitters and, if coordinated across willing countries, could raise around €121 billion a year, depending on design—offering a major new source of finance for adaptation, resilience, and loss and damage.
This approach builds on existing practice: more than 52 countries already apply some form of aviation levy. Several governments in the Global South are now examining just and equitable air-passenger levies that place higher costs on higher-income and higher-emitting travellers. In Kenya, for example, the new Air Passenger Service Charge sets fees at KSh 600 (about US $4) for domestic flights and KSh 6,500 (about US $50) for international flights, with higher rates for premium-class travel and the possibility of future increases through Gazette notice. These measures demonstrate how countries can advance climate ambition while strengthening the revenue tools needed to deliver it.
For many countries across Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean, fiscal space is tightening, debt is rising, and private finance cannot meet essential adaptation needs. Solidarity levies are not a replacement for existing commitments, but they remain one of the most practical tools for generating reliable, debt-free public revenue at the scale highlighted in the Baku-to-Belém roadmap.
The Nairobi negotiations cannot become another exercise in managed ambition
A familiar dynamic has emerged in Nairobi. Countries from Africa and the wider South are pushing for meaningful shifts, while some high-income countries and tax havens are using procedural delays and vague language to avoid commitments. Concerns about sovereignty are raised selectively, even as the climate crisis shows that sovereignty today is strengthened through cooperation, shared rules, and predictable public finance—not through isolation.
A new global tax system is being designed, but many negotiators do not yet seem aware of the scale of this moment or its implications for climate action, inequality, and development. Without mechanisms to tax major emitters, high-net-worth individuals, and multinational polluters, the emerging convention risks becoming another symbolic agreement.
The reforms under discussion are not abstract. Ending harmful tax incentives, tackling profit shifting, and strengthening transparency could raise US$2.6 trillion a year for governments worldwide—more than enough to meet climate-finance needs and expand fiscal space for development. These are the tools countries require to invest in resilience and reduce debt pressures. Choosing not to adopt them is, in effect, choosing climate austerity—underfunded systems facing ever-rising climate costs.
Tax rules decide who carries the costs of the climate crisis
The climate crisis has made the links between public finance, inequality, and environmental survival impossible to ignore. Since 2015, the richest 1 percent have captured US$33.9 trillion in newly created wealth—an amount that dwarfs the total wealth owned today by the entire bottom half of the world’s population.
Alongside this, the world's largest oil and gas companies made around US$200 billion in profits in 2022, much of it in the form of windfall gains amid the global energy crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And all of this sits atop a global economy that still directs more than US$7 trillion a year in fossil fuel subsidies—public money that props up the very industries driving the crisis.
It is against this concentration of wealth and public resources that this week’s negotiations show how closely climate action and revenue systems are intertwined. Recognizing that connection—and acting on it—will determine the future governments choose to build, and whose pockets they expect to fund it.
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50,000 March in Brazil to Celebrate Death of Fossil Fuel Industry at COP30
"It is time to put these old fuels where they belong—in the ground of history.”
Nov 16, 2025
An estimated 50,000 people took to the streets of Belém do Pará, Brazil, on Saturday to demonstrate outside the halls of the United Nations annual climate summit, holding a "Great People's March" and makeshift "Funeral for Fossil Fuels" as they demanded a just transition toward a more renewable energy system and egalitarian economy.
Organized by civil society organizations and Indigenous Peoples groups from Brazil and beyond, the tens of thousands who marched outside the thirtieth Conference of the Parties (COP30) summit called for an end to the rapacious greed of the oil, gas, and coal companies as they advocated for big polluters to pay for the large-scale damage their businesses have caused worldwide over the last century.
“We are tens of thousands here today, on the streets of Belém, to show negotiators at COP30 that this is what people power looks like," said Carolina Pasquali, executive director of Greenpeace Brazil, said as the march took hold. "Yesterday we found out that one in every 25 COP30 participants is a fossil fuel lobbyist, proportionally a 12% increase from last year’s COP. How can the climate crisis be solved while those creating it are influencing the talks and delaying decisions? The people are getting fed up–enough talking, we need action and we need it now.”
The report by the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition last week showed that at least 1,600 lobbyists from the fossil fuel industry are present at the conference, making it the second-largest delegation overall, second only to Brazil's, the host nation.
"It’s common sense that you cannot solve a problem by giving power to those who caused it," said Jax Bongon from the Philippines-based IBON International, a member of the coalition, in a Friday statement. "Yet three decades and 30 COPs later, more than 1,500 fossil fuel lobbyists are roaming the climate talks as if they belong here. It is infuriating to watch their influence deepen year after year, making a mockery of the process and of the communities suffering its consequences."
While the overwhelming presence of fossil fuel lobbyists has once again diminished hopes that anything worthwhile will emerge from the conference, the tens of thousands in the streets on Saturday represented the ongoing determination of the global climate movement.
João Talocchi, co-founder of Alianza Potência Energética Latin America, one of the key groups behind the "Funeral for Fossil Fuels" portion of the day's action—which included mock caskets for the oil, gas, and coal companies alongside parades of jungle animals, wind turbines, and solar panels representing what's at stake and the better path forward—noted the key leadership of Indigenous groups from across the Global South.
"From the Global South to the world, we are showing what a fair and courageous energy transition must look like," said Talochhi.
Ilan Zugman, director of 350.org in Latin America and the Caribbean, noted the significance of the demonstration, including the symbolism of the funeral procession.
"We march symbolically burying fossil fuels because they are the root of the crisis threatening our lives," explained Zugman. "Humanity already knows the way forward: clean energy, climate justice, and respect for the peoples who protect life. What is missing is political courage to break once and for all with oil, gas, and coal. It is time to put these old fuels where they belong—in the ground of history.”
With the COP30 at its midway point, climate activists warn that not nearly enough progress is being made, with the outsized influence of the fossil fuel industry one of the key reasons that governments, year after year and decade after decade, continue to drag their feet when it comes to taking the kind of aggressive actions to stem the climate crisis that scientists and experts say is necessary.
“We are taking to the streets because, while governments are not acting fast enough to make polluters pay for their climate damages at COP30, extreme weather events continue to wreak havoc across the globe," said Abdoulaye Diallo, co-head of Greenpeace International's "Make Polluters Pay" campaign. "That is why we are here, carrying the climate polluters bill, showing the projected economic damages of more than $5 trillion from the emissions of just five oil and gas companies over the last decade."
"Fossil fuel companies are destroying our planet, and people are paying the price," said Diallo. "Negotiators must wake up to the growing public and political pressure to make polluters pay, and agree to new polluter taxes in the final COP30 outcome."
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Let This Be the Turning Point: Climate Justice After Hurricane Melissa
Hurricane Melissa was no “natural disaster.” It was the predictable result of choices made by powerful interests that continue to profit from a warming planet.
Nov 14, 2025
The wind began howling shortly after midnight on a Tuesday morning. My husband and I gathered the children and moved them into our designated “safe space.” We couldn’t sleep. The roof groaned. The windows rattled. By dawn, the sun broke through to reveal the aftermath. Debris and fallen trees littered the area around our home, but we were fortunate—though we’d lost power, our house was intact. But as I scrolled through the images now flooding social media, primarily from the western side of the island, my emotions swung from relief to despair to sorrow. Black River, Savanna-la-Mar, Santa Cruz, Treasure Beach, Montego Bay, and many other communities were devastated.
Hurricane Melissa, a Category 5 storm at landfall, approached Jamaica slowly before drifting westward along the southern coast. Meteorologists struggled to predict its path. The storm’s slow crawl and eventual path across Jamaica brought something even more dangerous: hours of torrential rain, widespread flooding, and destructive winds.
It’s already considered among the most powerful Atlantic hurricanes in recent history. Yet as the media breathlessly warned of the dangers, few spoke of the connection between this storm and the climate crisis. We kept hearing the term “natural disaster.” Hurricane Melissa, however, was anything but natural.
While hurricanes are natural hazards, the scale of destruction we now face is man-made. Over the past century, the burning of coal, oil, and gas has supercharged our atmosphere with greenhouse gases, trapping heat and warming the oceans that fuel storms like Melissa. Warmer seas mean more intense hurricanes, heavier rainfall, and slower-moving systems that linger and devastate. Meteorologists continuously emphasized how warm the Caribbean Sea was before Melissa made landfall, and how deep the warm water extended, fueling the hurricane.
As the media breathlessly warned of the dangers, few spoke of the connection between this storm and the climate crisis.
While fossil fuel companies have known about the correlation between the warming and a changing climate for decades, they have spent billions sowing doubt, funding misinformation, and lobbying against climate policies that could have curbed emissions. Their profits have come at the expense of our safety and our future. Countries like Jamaica, responsible for less than one percent of global emissions, are left to shoulder the costs of adaptation, recovery, and rebuilding. Longer recovery times and deeper economic strain are becoming the norm.
So, no, Hurricane Melissa was not a “natural disaster.” It was the predictable result of choices made by powerful interests that continue to profit from a warming planet. If global emissions are not drastically reduced urgently, these events will only escalate.
After a disaster, we often applaud those who are able to recover quickly. But we cannot just be resilient in the face of climate chaos —we must be climate resilient. This type of resilience goes further: it’s about the capacity of individuals, communities, and ecosystems to anticipate, prepare for, and respond to the impacts of the climate crisis. That ability to recover means more than rebuilding roads, bridges, hospitals, schools, and homes. It means enforcing environmental laws that prevent unsafe development, investing in nature-based solutions, and ensuring that recovery reaches everyone. It also means supporting community-led adaptation initiatives that are rooted in local knowledge and collective care.
Preparedness must become a culture, not a scramble, before a storm makes landfall. That includes maintaining drainage systems year-round, preserving wetlands that buffer storm surges, enforcing no-build zones and ensuring that technical experts, including meteorologists, hydrologists, and climate scientists—not just politicians—play visible roles in guiding public communication and action.
Hurricane Melissa forces us to confront this issue of climate justice. That’s why the Caribbean Climate Justice Alliance, a coalition of grassroots leaders, creatives, academics, and activists, is calling for bold, unified, justice-centered action at COP30 happening right now in Brazil. The message to world leaders is clear:
- Cut emissions and keep global warming below 1.5°C, recognizing historical responsibility and prioritizing people over profit.
- Scale up locally led, nature-based solutions for adaptation and resilience—our communities already know what works.
- Ensure climate finance reaches the frontlines, supporting small businesses, community groups, and civil society.
- Address loss and damage in all its forms—economic, cultural, and ecological—because not everything can be rebuilt.
- Advance a rights-based approach to climate action that is inclusive, gender-responsive, and grounded in dignity.
This message reflects the lived realities of people across our islands. Hurricane Melissa has reminded us of our vulnerability, but also of our strength, our knowledge, and our capacity to lead. In the coming weeks and months, as relief turns to recovery, we must also keep an eye on transformation. The choices we make now about how we rebuild our towns and cities, as well as how we support farmers, fishers, and community groups will determine whether the next storm brings the same level of devastation.
Let Hurricane Melissa mark not just a moment to rebuild, but a turning point for radical and just changes that are long overdue.
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Killing Climate Lies That Kill
This game of lies started decades ago with big oil and gas corporations, long before “fake news,” disinformation and misinformation were a thing. It's only gotten worse.
Nov 14, 2025
Blatant lies are putting the people and our planet at risk. Often told for profit or power’s sake, they hurt economic, environmental, and social standing of most of us at the expense of a few. In this nasty game, those who strive to expose the truth and stand up for progress pay the steepest price. And they are environmental activists, journalists, scientists, and ordinary citizens defending their communities.
This month, two pivotal global summits happen that could bring change. In Bangkok, Thailand, the International Civil Society Week brought together over a thousand citizen activists from around the world. In Belem, Brazil, COP30—the global climate conference—will see governments, businesses, scientists, and many others negotiate. Citizen activists and civil society may finally have a say there. The last three climate summits held in countries where there’s little democratic freedom and heavy reliance on oil production shunned them.
To fight the lies that stall progress, Brazil has launched a Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change at the climate summit. The civil society week declaration calls strongly for both climate action and ending disinformation. Global civil society leaders like Oxfam, ActionAid, and Greenpeace as well as hundreds of grassroots organizations from Afghanistan to Zambia have endorsed.
However, buzzwords like disinformation and lack of information integrity, in their sophistication, often dull the impact. Perhaps they feel inauthentic. We need to think outside the box to engage in more authentic conversations involving people with diverse viewpoints.
For starters, let’s call false information what they are, lies. Lies that pervert the progress, hurt the many, and kill those who speak up. This game of lies started decades ago with big oil and gas corporations, long before “fake news,” disinformation and misinformation were a thing. What has gotten worse is that they are now blatantly colluding with governments and political leaders around the world to protect their short-term gain.
Those who stand to lose the most in the game are ordinary folks, especially those who struggle to make a daily living or don’t have the resources to defend themselves.
Let’s be clear: this isn’t only about “social justice.” The climate lies stall economic growth. The United Sates, once the global champion of the free market, is today doomed to become uncompetitive. President Trump, sponsored by American oil oligarchs blatantly lied at the United Nations earlier this year. His claims that renewable energy is dangerous, expensive, and unreliable will hurt the economic progress of the United States and the world.
He attacked countries making progress on renewable energy. The narrative of lies leads to decisions and bullying of nations and communities. When Trump raised tariffs against solar panels made in Southeast Asia, workers lost jobs. This includes Thailand, where civil society week was held.
Examples are many from Trump and other regimes. Russian bots, European and Australian leaders, too, have spread lies about the unreliability of renewable energy, including false threats of job loss and a rise in commodity prices. China, despite being the global leader in renewable energy, attacks environmental activists.
The lies kill. In the past decade, over 2,000 activists have paid with their lives for speaking up and standing up to protect forests, rivers, and community resources. They stood up against coal and oil extraction, mining, logging, land grabbing, and large-scale development that destroyed communities.
Civil society and activists who speak up get labelled foreign agents or eco-terrorists. They are arrested, harassed in public and in courts, and bullied online. This is despite their efforts to try to protect us. Every year, climate disasters, worsened by fossil fuels and harmful developments, kill tens of thousands and displace millions. The lies kill both blatantly and silently.
For the lies and bullying to end, we must engage in an open, honest, and empathic conversation. We need to have dialogue with diverse viewpoints. And this is not easy because all of us are burdened with our daily struggles and comfortable with information consumption habits. Hearing difficult truths and contradicting points of view are stressful.
Civil society, movements, development organizations, and media are losing relevance and trust among the general public. We have failed at listening, speaking, and interacting with farmers, women workers, students, young men, doctors, and business folks. Yes, we do speak up, but well-intentioned campaigns often end up merely preaching to the choir.
We get likes on social media, signatures for petitions, and like-minded folks at street protests. But that isn’t enough to build empathy and build a majority movement, even with those who are most likely to suffer from climate lies and bullying. To connect with people and come together with people, we must first care about who they are. As agents of social change, it is not just about playing to an audience but taking care as an ethical duty.
At the same time, we must shout out at the big fat liars, Big Oil, and their colluding partners in media and politics. Citizens, journalists, movements, and governments must stand for science, reason, and progress. This means urgently demanding an end to fossil fuels and moving to green energy while also protecting communities at risk during the transition. We must also defend the activists who stand up for our rights and the planet.
More of us must act today and stand with those who do. The argument for collective demand and action for climate progress isn’t just moral. Let’s call it collectively selfish–it may just improve our health and economic and social well-being.
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38 Former World Leaders Have a Message: Tax Fossil Giants to Fight Climate Crisis
“Pressure is mounting on today’s politicians to hold those most responsible for the climate crisis to account," said one Greenpeace campaigner.
Sep 24, 2025
Thirty-eight former world leaders on Wednesday used the occasion of the United Nations General Assembly this week in New York—as well as other global summits on the horizon—to demand a new global framework for steeper taxes on the world's wealthiest and most powerful fossil fuel giants to pay for an urgent transition away from dirty energy sources toward a healthier planet and more equitable economy.
Under the auspices of the nonpartisan Club de Madrid, the world’s largest forum of former democratically-elected presidents and prime ministers, an open letter—signed by Carlos Alvarado, former President of Costa Rica; Mari Kiviniemi, former Prime Minister of Finland; Chandrika Kumaratunga, former President of Sri Lanka; former UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon; and dozens of others—calls the climate crisis "a defining challenge of our time" and urges current leaders to "place the question of fair taxation of fossil fuel company profits firmly on national and international agendas" before it is too late.
"With wealthier countries leading by example," say the leaders, increased taxation of the world's coal, oil, and gas giants coupled with a redirection of taxpayer subsidies away from the fossil fuel sector and toward a just renewable energy transition "could be transformative, enabling a faster and fairer global transition and strengthening public trust that climate action can deliver tangible benefits for all."
"Taxing fossil fuel profits is not only fair—it is also essential to ease the economic burden of the climate crisis, felt by ordinary people through higher food prices, lost working days, pressure on energy bills and higher home insurance premiums.”
Citing the need for global cooperation and ambition to address the warming planet and ongoing climate breakdown, the open letter states:
It is time to consider innovative solutions that can simultaneously establish a clear incentive for companies to shift investment to renewable energy as quickly as possible, while mobilising significant funds to address climate damages and advance both equality and equity. Today, we call on you to consider permanent polluter profit taxes applied to high-emitting industries, designed to ensure contributions come from those with the greatest capacity to pay rather than from ordinary consumers of fossil fuels. With wealthier countries leading by example, these taxes should place the primary responsibility on those with the greatest capacity, not on middle- and low-income communities.
The former world leaders acknowledge the strain governments feel about generating the necessary revenue, estimated at approximately $6.5 trillion per year by 2030, to fund the rapid transition scientists and experts say is necessary to avoid the worst future impacts of an increasingly hotter planet. However, they argue that the polluting companies that have profited most from the fossil fuel era are best positioned to foot the bill, and that the cost of action is far less than the cost of fixing the damage that future climate change will cause if left unaddressed.
"During the oil and gas price crisis in 2022, many governments implemented windfall taxes. We must consider making such approaches permanent," the letter argues. "A polluter profits tax modestly applied to normal returns and significantly higher on windfall gains could, if applied just to oil, coal, and gas companies, generate up to $400 billion in its first year."
Rebecca Newsom, Greenpeace International's global political lead for its "Stop Drilling Start Paying" campaign, said the letter represents what real leadership looks like and that forcing fossil fuel giants to pay higher taxes to help solve the planetary crisis their insatiable greed has spurred has never been more popular with the people worldwide.
"This is a powerful call from former world leaders to make oil and gas corporations pay their fair share for the destruction they have caused," said Newsom.
Noting recent survey data, Newsom said 8 out of 10 people around the world now "support taxing these polluters for climate damages—the backing of former political leaders adds more weight to this urgent demand."
“Pressure is mounting on today’s politicians to hold those most responsible for the climate crisis to account," she said. "Taxing fossil fuel profits is not only fair—it is also essential to ease the economic burden of the climate crisis, felt by ordinary people through higher food prices, lost working days, pressure on energy bills and higher home insurance premiums.”
With the upcoming G20 summit in South Africa and the UN Global Tax Convention in Kenya, both scheduled for November, the former world leaders say the moment is right for global leaders to finally show urgency on the issue.
"The world has the tools, the knowledge, and the resources to act," their letter concludes. "What is needed now is the political courage to ensure that those with the greatest capacity contribute their fair share. This will not only advance climate justice but also strengthen the foundations of a more stable, resilient, and prosperous global economy."
Greenpeace's Newsom said the message is clear. "Governments must find the courage to decisively tax oil and gas corporations and redirect those funds towards a just transition away from fossil fuels and a safe future in the face of a climate crisis.”
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